How does your team scout?
 

Im kind of new to scouting at competitions and I was wondering how does your team scout?
thanks, Steve

Re: How does your team scout?
 

This isn't my team but they have a fantastic scouting system:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...t=cheesy+scout

Re: How does your team scout?
 

This would be great but what would you do with no internet? Also how does your team determine how you pick your alliance list?

Re: How does your team scout?
 

How we used to scout:
1 very experienced scouting mentor watched all the matches. He had a match schedule and listed teams we played with and againts, and the matches they were in before ours. Before each match, he would assemble his notes on a card that went to our coach to prep them for their next match. Friday night we would discuss what we saw and put together a pick list. This works pretty well if you only have enough help to have 1 dedicated scout. The coach will have good match info, and you will have enough info to make a reasonable pick list (every team needs a pick list 1-24). Every team needs to make a pick list Friday night even if you are not in the top 8, because you may get picked by a team that does not have a pick list.

In 2009, the Human player was extremely important. Since we are a team of 30, we had enough students to take stats on the human players. 6 students watched the 6 HPs and 1 student collected and assembled the data. This worked very well, and engaged the students that normally just cheered.

In 2010, we took it a step further. Inspired by teams that did a much better job scouting and thus better finds in their pick-list, we had a scout watch each robot. We had simple to fill out forms that we improved throughout the season. There is a copy of it in the white papers. Students took turns scouting robots, and 2 master scouts prepped the sheets before and after each match. Every team had a sheet with data on 6 of their matches. We also still had the scouting mentor taking notes and preparing match cards. This system was extremely accurate, and was a huge help towards preparing match strategy as last year's ranking system was finding just the right balance to win the match while making sure your opponents continued to score.

For 2011, we are continuing this system. After 1 event, I would say it is working really well. The minibot thing has added a new section to our scouting. Because hanging tubes and deploying minibots are so difficult, we found that our data was less conclusive after around the top 16 teams (of a 40 team district) than it was in 2010. Mostly because there is really only room for 2 robots at the rack, and with teams throwing tubes, finding value for the third partner is a bit tougher than in 2010 where the third had its role in the match.

General notes:
We like paper. We tried electronic databases in the past, but between batteries, people forgetting to save, and expensive laptops going missing... Paper and clipboards work well. Plus you can stand and take notes much easier than typing into a laptop. The 1 team 1 sheet thing is really nice for sorting Friday night to make a pick list. This system requires a minimum of 6-7 students. Ideally you want about 2x that many so that people can substitute in and out. For big teams (20+ students) this is a great way to engage students and have them critically watching the robots. This will pay major dividends during next seasons strategy sessions after game anouncement. The more matches you watch, the more you understand what is possible, what is likely doable, what the talent spread will look like. You will also cringed a little harder every time you read the word PENALTY when going through the game manual.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

This is a quick run down of how 1511 does scouting from Pit to actual performance and alliance selections:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...83#post1015483

(Kims Robot post)

Re: How does your team scout?
 

We've done personal scouting for the past couple years at the Peachtree Regional, with a computer-based scouting network recording match statistics, scores, video footage of the individual robots, and a myriad of pictures for each robot. Can't have enough data on the competition.

This year, in addition to making our own scouting system, we're working with teams 2974 (Team WALT), 1311 (Kell Robotics), & 2655 (Flying Platypi) on a online scouting database for participants of the Peachtree Regional. Not overly in-depth, but good enough to give a base of knowledge to the teams attending.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

I've been wanting to describe 1676's system for a while, here's a first poke at that since I remember the details from 2 days ago.

We have at least 6 students scouting per match, each assigned to a team. They use laptops running a custom app feeding a database to keep track of everything the team does. Data accuracy is emphasized. We scout Thursday practice matches as well. This is our quantitative data, which we always offer to every team at the regional with no strings attached.

We have at least one (often 2) super-scout per match as well, they scout all 6 teams for qualitative aspects - what did they try at but fail (which wouldn't be caught by the quantitative folks), and subjective impressions. Including their behavior.

Pit scouting factual data,
Video of every match from way up high (including Thurs),
And one ring to rule them all - a coordinator to keep things running smoothly.

On Friday night, we use various combinations of what we know to rank teams into Yes/Maybe/No categories for First Pick, then we review teams for potential Second Picks.

For example, some of the factors we looked at this year (in no particular order):
Team ranking from FRC
Raw score from hung tubes
Number of logos
Number of minibots successfully deployed
Ubertubes hung
Subjective rankings of super scouts
Basic capabilities - what you do best
How consistent are you - was the minibot a fluke or can you do it almost every match.

Lastly, we look at our strategies and describe what ideal alliance partners would look like for each strategy. Last year, one such strategy was to have a good reliable hanger, a robot that could score in the home zone (even a pusher was OK) and someone who could score in autonomous from the middle. Strategy counts for a lot.

All this put teams into categories. Teams in the top category were watched on video, and a preliminary decision is made. I can safely say that for NJ, we concluded that if we were #1 we would pick 2016 as our first pick (which we did). We had 9 other teams ranked below them for the case where we were not #1, but our hope was to then be picked by 2016, since they were the highest team on our list.

I emphasize our list is based on performance, not friendship or lobbying. For example, team 25 is an awesome team, and they took us to winning NJ last year. This year, their performance was lower than 2016's, and were thus not our first pick. But, as part of the review process, we did note that their averages were depressed by early matches, and by the end of Friday they were driving a winning robot again. So, late performance on Friday counts more than early performance.

Anyway, we then re-hash the data looking for "sleepers", teams which are performing well but didn't appear on our top 10 lists. We found more than one this year.

We watch more match videos, clarifying comments we saw, verifying data, and getting questions to ask teams on Saturday morning. We end up with a list of 25 teams - mostly ranked, some to be ranked after clarifications and further review - which becomes our list.

Some tweaking may be done on Saturday.

So, for relatively new teams, or those inexperienced at scouting for potential alliances, some lessons:
Your actual FRC ranking doesn't matter too much*.
Friday's performance counts the most.
Later matches hold more sway than your first matches.
Consistency is important.
Certain unique capabilities can get you on the list.
Teams played with or against don't matter much, only your team's performance is reviewed.
Team behavior is a factor, not just drive team but anywhere we see someone from your team.

Hope this helps someone out there.


* True story: 1676 was ranked higher than 15 in one game, but never got picked for elims. Some kind teams explained why: we were inconsistent on Friday (but were excellent on Saturday) and did not meet most teams strategies. Had nothing to do with "they don't like us" and all to do with performance.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Thank you all this has helped me a lot. I cant wait to try some of this at the dc regional. So basically pit scouting is factual and making a mock alliance list on Friday is the best day. So ive seen paper and computer scouting so far. I didn't know teams sent so into scouting. Well Thank you everyone and good luck this year. Also, who is coming to dc with 578 all I know is 1511 from the finger lakes regional.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Good scouting wins matches.

We also use the scouting data we have to set up a strategy for qualification matches. The idea is to figure out a strategy with your alliance partners to defeat the opposing alliance, since more wins = higher rank. We were #1 seed at NJ yesterday, so I guess it works.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

you might want to check out the FIRST Scouting Alliance (FSA) that way you can have access to anyone's match data from previous events as well as nicely defined scouting sheets, oogles of statistics, strategy matching, and it even attempts to give you a win percentage based on the competing strategies and stats of the robots attempting those strategies.

https://sites.google.com/site/1stscoutingalliance/home

Re: How does your team scout?
 

I've seen this site linked a couple of times, but I can't seem to find anything for this year. Am I just looking at the wrong places?

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Wow nice seed 1 how did you do?

Re: How does your team scout?
 

I'm pretty sure that Danny (the founder) has just been slow on the update. If you have questions, I suggest emailing him. I'm 99% sure that you can find his contact information on the site.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

My view is that your scouting data, list and rankings, has to be adaptable for the representative for alliance selections, you cannot simply hand the rep. a list of just team numbers in order of which you want to pick. If you do this, then the coach cannot properly help choose an alliance that works together and covers each others weaknesses.

I know at FLR this year (yesterday haha), my team (191) was the third alliance captain and I choose 229 with our first pick. Now 229 had been absolutely stellar at hanging tubes, easily top 5 in the qualification rounds, but were unable to successfully deploy a mini-bot during qualification rounds. We knew that with our 2nd. pick we had to pick a team with a successful mini-bot. Now if I had been up there with just a list of teams ranked, by that 14th pick, I would have been largely clueless as to which teams had had a successful mini-bot, especially because there were only around 15 teams to do a mini-bot successfully, and most of them would have been scooped up by the time we were to pick. However, my scout had given me a descriptor of each of the top teams and from that, I was able to identify 3173 as a successful mini-bot team that would compliment our alliance.

Going into alliance selections, we were unsure of what was going to happen, whether we were going to be chosen, who would be picked before us, etc. Once the scenario came about and had us picking 229, it greatly benefited us with the ability to find our next pick not only as a good robot, but additionally as a robot that complimented our alliance.

When scouting for alliance selection, it is key to be able to not just give the representative a ranking, but to also give the representative the information they need to make an alliance that fully complements each others abilities.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

nice job at the flr 191 too bad some of your alliances robots didn't work the last match.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Thanks, it definitely wasnt just them who broke, in fact 229 had to basically do all the top row hanging themself that last match. One of our robot's elevator motors smoked out so we wern't able to raise the elevator up, so we could only get to the bottom row that match.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Gotta love the Banebots (or not).

Re: How does your team scout?
 

We have 6 iPods which are set to view a page which I designed for viewing on mobile devices. Six players watch each match, and record data into the form, which looks like this:

http://k.min.us/ilKsrI.png

The data is inserted into a MySQL database, and later retrieved into an XLS file (using some XLS functions I found online and converted to a class,) in the correct format to fit this: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2450?

We copy and paste the data and the analyzer does the rest.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

On 176, we do the following -

We have 1 student per robot, and 1 student per HP, in the years that they have a hand in scoring.

On Friday, 12 students fill out sheets for 6 robots and 6 HPs, each match.
Friday night, the scouts organize the sheets by team. We usually have about 7 sheets per team, 1 for each round they were in.
We look at the top 24 teams in rank on the FIRST site, and we disregard ourselves.
We re-rank the teams based on how good they are, according to our scouters.
We then have a list of 24 top teams, in order from best to worst.
We then try to run through mock alliance picks, and form alliances from the 24 teams we've selected.
We then finally look at where our team sits between that, and whether or not it's likely we'll be picking.
If we find it's likely we'll be picking, we look for robots around us according to our rank list, and then form an alliance.
We create a list of a few possible first picks, and a few possible second picks.
The robots we choose are custom-fit to the strategy we have established, and they are listed best to worst in order of how well they play/compliment us.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Do you not look at teams ranked lower than 24?

Re: How does your team scout?
 

We look past the top 24 if we see that we cannot create a solid list of 24 just by reordering. If we find that a team ranked higher than 24 does not deserve to be there, we push them down to a "free fall" list, and if there are enough of the fallers in the top 24, we start pulling teams up who weren't initially in the top 24.

So, sometimes the original 24 makes a good list when it is simply reordered for us, but as you brought up, sometimes we search deeper than that. 24 is just a general starting cutoff for us.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

I was rooting for your alliance to get to the finals and be the first to beat 2056 217 and 1533 didnt happen:(

Re: How does your team scout?
 

you scout the human players? Havent heard of that do they make a big impact on alliance selections?

Re: How does your team scout?
 

I think a lot of teams underestimate the importance of scouting. We have been using the following method for a few years and it has worked out very well.

We have 6 scouts in the stands at all times, one for each robot position of each match (RED 1, RED 2, RED 3, etc...), each with an easy to fill out, intutitive scouting sheet. Each student on the team is on scouting rotations throughout the day so they do not get bored. Data slowly becomes worse the longer you have students scout we have found.

We also have 1 scouting student leader, in the stands the entire day. This person takes the sheets that each of the scounts complete after each match and inputs all of the data into a single home made database. This eliminates the need for multiple computers/electrical/battery etc.

We are then able to have a print-out summary of each of our alliance partners/opponents prior to each match for strategy discussion. Also, this makes sorting through data on Friday night much easier.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Also does your team have a data entry database or some program to enter information and make your alliance picks be easier?

Re: How does your team scout?
 

anyone?

Re: How does your team scout?
 

I'm using the Aluminum Falcons spreadsheet program as a secondary source.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2450

Also, I'm using OPRnet in order to get the OPR score for the teams to add to my own research.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ghlight=oprnet

But I'm not really using any specific programs other than OneNote & Picasa.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

One place to look for information needed is on your team itself, specifically the drive team. Simply asking your teams coach about what info they need to know about teams in a good place to start. As my teams drive team coach, I usually put together a basic scouting sheet for the scouts to work with and develop to how they scout and still get the info we need for strategy. This info also then doubles as our alliance picking info which starts development Friday night but isn't finalized until noonish Saturday during lunch right before alliance selection.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

This year, in addition to pit scouting, we're using a custom program I threw together that is similar in concept to Aluminum Falcon's program:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=93841

There is only one person watching each match (although a second person is useful to ensure the first one doesn't miss anything). The user enters in the 6 teams competing in that match, and then whenever points are earned can attribute them to whichever team did the scoring. The program then compiles the data at the end of each match and shows the total points each team has earned in auto, teleop, and endgame, as well as ranking the teams by total points earned / matches played, with the option of disregarding select teams. We took the data and copied it by hand to paper for our captain to take onto the field for alliance pickings, which was pretty quick as there were only 28 teams. It doesn't make Excel docs; :( that's not my expertise. I opted out of internet databases, as internet is not always available. (it wasn't at our regional anyway)
The program doesn't go into bonuses or penalties or failed minibot attempts, but relies on the fact that if a team is consistent with their scoring they will get a higher subscore in that area. It's simple, but it works pretty well. The program will also give strategy advice based on what teams you are up against and what the strengths of your partners are, as well as what strategies you can expect from the opposing alliance.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

We have 6 scouters (one for each robot) that fills out a form similar to a Scantron. Then after the match we load the forms into a scanner and let it process them and put the information into a SQL database for later analysis which is done through Excel. Previously, the alliance selection was done through the web system, but Excel offers more flexibility.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Thank You guys for the suggestions about scouting my second time scouting and we improved by this time making a pick list, some match scouting, and making strategies based upon our scouting information. We got to the semi finals at Dc and Got picked on the 8th seed alliance and was the first pick.
Well good luck to you all and have a great season.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

This doesn't seem to have come up yet, but since my team uses a computer based scouting method (we have 2 kids watching each alliance, writing down on small white-boards who scored what during the match; after the match they give all the data to the one kid with a laptop who puts it into our custom spreadsheet) we are often slaves to wherever we found power outlets. However this year, we took some batteries from the pit, and with a power inverter we bought online, we were able to sit wherever we wanted to. All we had to do was send someone back to the pit every three hours or so to trade in one 12v battery for a charged one. It worked perfectly.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

team 1089 uses paper and clipboards. its a better system for us. personally, as one of our lead scouters, i like looking at qualitative data, and observations from students, rather than quantitative data based on formulas and such. we have a fairly large team, so we use 6 students scouting one specific position on the field (red far, blue close etc for this year). they scout for a set amount of matches and then pass the clipboard on to the other student they are paired with. our scouting sheets are pretty thorough, we have info for auton, tele-op (how many tubes hung etc.), and minibots. we have a comments section at the bottom for students to write down any other observations. our team also pit scouts robots on thursday in lieu of scouting practice matches. these pit scouting rounds give us insight on people's actual robots. one reason for these sheets (that we found out at DC lol) is that if a certain team has a robot similar to ours, we can ask them for help if we have any problems.

anyway, i feel that our system works really well. our student scouters get better at every competition, and having an experienced mentor like Sara Reffler (bandchick) really helps when we are making our final list. we have gotten good results as a result of scouting. in nj, we were the 6th seed, and made it all the way to the finals, beating 25 on the way! at dc, we were the 7th seed and still managed to take down the 2 seed before finally losing to 2016 and the eventual regional finalists in the semis. im leaving this year, but the system i described has been around for a long time on our team, and im sure it will stay the same in the future. if anybody has any more questions, you can PM me, or you can ask one of our team members at any competition you see us at! hope this helped

Re: How does your team scout?
 

This year our team decided to go about scouting in a different way than previously. We have decided to always have six students in the stands and have each of them incharge of watching a specific robot during each match. We have a sepearte sheet for each team, where the students record each teams strengths, weaknesses, minibots, and where and how many tubes are hung in each match. We also send someone around the pits on Thursday to take a picture of each robot so, when we have our strategy meeting Friday Night, we have all of the information about each robot and a picture to go along with each sheet. :D

Re: How does your team scout?
 

We on FRC2168 use the scouting system we developed as posted here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2450

There will likely be a new update based on feedback before this weekend.

Here's a basic rundown of what we do.

We have six "match scouts", one watching each of the robots on the field, in assigned seats up in the stands. The students rotate, and at most events we work with another team and share the raw data. We worked with 3280 this year at WPI and intend to work with 176 at CT. There is either one or two people inputting the data into the system.

We also take a picture of each robot and make basic notes about their design choices, though we don't often ask alot of questions, just stopping by and visually looking at the robots (no questions like "how many wheels do you have").

A few students and myself watch the matches and take general notes on strategy and who to watch out for as well as who we would work well with.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Our scout team has about 2-3 people watching each match and taking notes about how the robots are working and interacting with each other. They take into account various factors that we consider to be important. Last year we used paper charts to record the observations, that seemed to work fairly well. We also do a lot of pit scouting to find out the general functionality of each robot. That really helps when going into the matches, so the scouts watching know what to focus on.

Re: How does your team scout?
 

Our team's scouting program has been changed to allow down to one person preenter match schedules, collect all necessary data, get strategy advice, and be able to sort teams based on their observed scores in automode, teleop, minibot, or total, as well as export the data to an Excel spreadsheet, print a hard copy of the data, or assign photos to each team to view with the data.